6 Cut Mans vs 23 Pharaoh Mans

By no means a bad game, but not nearly as good as it could be. The core gameplay is decent enough—choose a character, grab as many CDs as you can, and find the exit—but after two or three levels, you've seen almost everything the game has to offer. Samey locations (both in terms of graphics and architecture) and a very small roster of enemies and obstacles make for a repetitive experience. Playing as different characters helps to keep things fresh, except a couple of them are a liability (my very first jump with Samus rocketed me into a ceiling of spikes), and there's no easy way to swap characters between levels. Graphically, the game is an odd mishmash of styles; narratively, I'm not really sure what the point of the game is (and the opening cutscene doesn't seem to connect with the gameplay). The soundtrack is engaging and I like the variety of characters, but they aren't enough to recommend the game.

[Last updated Aug 26, 2016]

Hard Hat: The Rebellion

Mega Man: An Uncertain Future

Mega Man: Dark Legacy

Mega Man: Day in the Limelight

Mega Man DOS Remake

Command Mission shows us that a Mega Man X RPG can work, but only if the gameplay is more sophisticated than "Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Restore health. Repeat." There's the illusion of choice: it looks like you can pick any stage and skip any battle that isn't blocking your path, but the reality is that you need every single scrap of XP you can gather to defeat the boss of the easiest stage, let alone take on the weakest enemy in the hardest stage. For all intents and purposes, this is an on-rails RPG where the only strategy is when to heal. A compelling story might compensate somewhat for the lackluster and repetitive gameplay, but the story is mostly an excuse to go blow up robots.

[Last updated Aug 27, 2016]

Mega Man: Origins

The creator's enthusiasm for Mega Man is palpable, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. An overlong intro cutscene with serious (but funny) graphical and grammatical issues, functional but unpolished controls, awkward screen transitions, unremarkable challenges, arbitrarily selected MIDI music, and dull fights with muddy-looking bosses make for a subpar gaming experience. On the plus side, the level graphics are implemented well, faithfully recreating the look of the NES games; the Mega Block is a useful starting ability that's a welcome alternative to Rush; and...I guess those are the main selling points. Origins is playable enough that I wouldn't discourage you from trying it, but aside from a handful of custom enemy sprites, there's nothing here that you can't find elsewhere with fewer problems.

[Last updated Mar 26, 2017]

Mega Man Rocks!

Aside from a quick laugh, there's really no reason to play this husk of a game. The only fun comes from giggling at the egregious typos on the instruction page, tearing apart enemies for the five seconds before the gameplay grows thoroughly repetitive, watching your score grow preposterously large in a matter of seconds, and watching X float off into deep space because there are no screen boundaries. Which, admittedly, is a decent amount of fun, but it's fun for all the wrong reasons. The visuals are crude and make no sense, the gameplay consists of holding down a key and wiggling up and down for all eternity, the hitboxes are ridiculously large, and there's no apparent goal or victory condition aside from racking up a meaningless high score.

[Last updated Aug 26, 2016]

Mega Man: The Dark Resistence

Mega Man X Armors

Mega Man X: Night Shade

Shadow Man Run

You'd think that a space-themed game smashing together MM5 and MMV would be a hoot. Despite a fun concept and story, good production values, and decent challenges, Star Man's mission to defeat the Stardroids is doomed to fail because the game is almost unplayable. Star Man is at a severe disadvantage—you can only activate his shield when on the ground, but it only damages enemies when thrown, and you can only throw it when in the air. The shield disappears immediately upon contact with an enemy, so you're effectively defenseless at excessively close range. With so many tight corridors and so many enemies that like to swarm you, you're frequently at excessively close range. The shield will disappear when hit by a projectile, yet it travels through projectiles when thrown, which is confusingly inconsistent. Making matters worse, the shield does a negligible amount of damage to all but the smallest enemies, making skirmishes with shielded enemies incredibly tedious and boss fights nearly impossible. I might be able to forgive these annoyances if they were fully accurate to Star Man's abilities in MM5 or if the level design accounted for his shortcomings, but that's not the case. A dedicated player might be able to conquer the game with enough practice and patience, but the absence of a Continue feature excludes all but the most insanely hardcore—if you Game Over, you're back to the title screen. The enjoyment of playing as Star Man is not worth the pain of redoing the whole game every time you slip up.